Opposition to the UK-Rwanda migrants deal in the United Kingdom will go to any length to stop asylum seekers being sent to Rwanda. They have tried to find fault with it, lied and invented unlikely tales, and it appears they will not stop.
They took issue with Rwanda as a destination for the asylum seekers, arguing that it is not a safe country. They went to court and got their wish. The fact that Rwanda already hosts thousands of refugees did not make any impression.
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The UK negotiated and signed a new treaty with Rwanda that sought to address some of those misgivings. It tabled a bill in parliament to address the question of safety in Rwanda. That bill has now been enacted into law after a long journey in parliament where it met strong opposition in the unelected House of Lords.
Flights carrying asylum seekers to Rwanda will start in the next month or so.
The legislative path to stopping the deal from being implemented may have ended and the judicial challenges seem unlikely to succeed, but opposition has not died out.
Its opponents have returned to old methods of misinformation, fabrication and smearing of Rwanda in the media as an unsafe country, unsuitable to host asylum seekers.
The Guardian newspaper in the UK is, not for the first time, again at the forefront of this campaign. It has been a conduit for every negative story about Rwanda, whether correct or not. It does not bother to check the facts as any responsible publication should.
It is a self-appointed promoter of obscure politicians, sanitiser of disgraced individuals or criminals masquerading as opposition political leaders, all of whom it elevates to such heights that even these nonentities and sordid characters find it dizzying.
On Friday, May 10, it treated its readers to an incredible tale of mysterious Rwandans suddenly turning up on an island in Papua New Guinea and seeking asylum in Australia. I doubt the Guardian editors believe the story themselves.
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The intention of the tale is clear from the start. The opening paragraph says it all. "As the UK government continues its push to forcibly remove (Guardian emphasis) asylum seekers to Rwanda, a group of Rwandan nationals has claimed asylum in Australia after arriving by boat on a remote island."
The motive of this incredible yarn is repeated later in the story so that no one misses the point. "It is incredibly ironic that at the same time the UK is rounding up people to send to Rwanda, there are reports of Rwandans arriving on Australia's shores seeking asylum," it quotes Jana Favero of Asylum Seekers Resource Centre in Melbourne..
This group of five unidentified men arrived in Jakarta, Indonesia from an unnamed place and then travelled to Papua New Guinea by unknown means.
They reportedly then took a dingy boat to a remote island of Saibai where they were discovered by hunters in crocodile-infested mangroves.
Everything about these supposed Rwandan asylum seekers is unknown. No names. No one knows where they came from. No reason for seeking asylum.
Papua New Guinea authorities know nothing about them. Indeed the chief migration officer, Wellington Navasivu said, "PNG has yet to receive any formal communication from Australia on this matter." The foreign affairs minister told the Guardian that it was "news to me...this is the first I am hearing about this."
They are mysterious. Perhaps even unreal.
Of course Rwandans live in many parts of the world, including Australia. Some work there; others went to study. Some are refugees, many of whom are there by choice.
Others are fugitives from justice, the majority of them suspected perpetrators of the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda in 1994.
None of them went there by any hazardous route. Indeed, many were assisted by sponsors in some of those countries. At any rate, we have not heard of Rwandans among those who make the perilous crossing to Europe across the Mediterranean Sea in overcrowded boats with many drowning into the sea, or making the overland route across the Sahara or Arabian deserts and succumbing to thirst and heat and exhaustion.
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If they had to make any hazardous journey to seek asylum, it would be to Europe and that is the more familiar and shorter route to take. But somehow ending up in Indonesia and making a dangerous overland journey to Papua New Guinea, through jungle and a lot of unfamiliar things?
That is strange. What would they be fleeing from to make them undertake such an unlikely journey?
The Guardian story of mysterious Rwandans suddenly appearing on the other side of the planet thousands of miles away, apparently from nowhere, seems to be simply another smear job.
Unfairly, of course, The quarrel in the UK over what to do with asylum seekers on or inside their borders is essentially a domestic quarrel that they should deal with without maligning others whose only crime is offering help.
